While deciding what toy to buy for her 4-year-old grandson, Beaumont's Chris Gaspard took time to reminisce about her favorite toy when she was a child.

One Christmas was more special than all the others, the 56-year-old said, because her parents found her what she wanted: a Bride Doll.

"She was tall," Gaspard of the doll and held her hand up to her waist to measure. "She had a beautiful gown. I was a real girly girl and I loved it."

The most memorable toys are the sometimes the simplest ones, said Nicolas Ricketts, curator for The Strong and the National Museum of Play. But it took the ball, one of the simplest but most versatile toys ever invented, almost a decade to be inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2009.

Since 1998, the National Toy Hall of Fame, housed in New York, has inducted 46 toys that almost everyone has played with a time or two. Anywhere from Barbie to playing cards to an Easy-Bake Oven to Lincoln Logs, the Hall of Fame has found a place for these timeless treasures.